Jasper,

Catastrophic crashes point to your graphics card and its relation to the power supply.

First measures are

(1) Check that your power supply is properly connected and can actually provide the power required. Specifically if you use one of those GPU monsters. Your symptoms that the system goes completely dead indicate a connection to an overloaded or defective power supply.

(2) update the driver of the graphics card

(3) Update the BIOS of your motherboard.

(4) Rule out interrupt conflicts: If possible try another PCIe slot for your graphics card. Your mobo may have two or even three.

(5) Unplug and deactivate via BIOS anything else including onboard devices (LAN, sound, video, USB). If that helps selectively re-activate each device until the crashes reappear.

(6) If that doesn't help try to swap your graphics card against an alternative model and see whether the crashes continue.


My experience with system crashes related to graphics applications was this:
I once had an - not yet recognized - interrupt conflict between my onboard LAN and something else in my system. The system seemed completely stable unless I started streaming videos via a specific piece of DLNA software. That BSOD'd my system. Same video through another DLNA server worked. I analyzed the BSOD dumps and got clear indication of the interrupt issue involving my NIC.

Good luck and a Happy New Year

jasper1 ,

I strongly suggest that you post your DxDiag file for the experienced user on this forum to look at and we'll take it from there. PD11 works very well on a PC that is equipped to handle it.

At this point there is no need to rebuild your PC or play with areas that you may not be comfortable with. Win 10, i7

I too cannot get the new powerdirector 11 to do much without crashing in Windows 8. Seems like every crash gives another error code. The program is wearing me out. I'm just using the exact files I was editing with version 10 without any issues. My screen doesn't go blank, just blue and it performs the crash, restart sequence of Windows 8. I have a Quad-Core with 8GB RAM but still doesn't work.

Quote: I too cannot get the new powerdirector 11 to do much without crashing in Windows 8. Seems like every crash gives another error code. The program is wearing me out. I'm just using the exact files I was editing with version 10 without any issues. My screen doesn't go blank, just blue and it performs the crash, restart sequence of Windows 8. I have a Quad-Core with 8GB RAM but still doesn't work.

And you dxdiag information is where? Please post it. Laptop or desktop? What is the CPU usage when you are working with the program? How long has it been at the level? .
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Anything I post unless stated with a reference is my personal opinion.

jasper1 and James,

I've had the same problem. This has been a major frustration, but I have found a solution!

I've followed the software and driver update suggestions from tech support, and have improved memory settings and page file size, with only slight improvement to how far it would go into production before it would shut down. Here's what I discovered was the problem: The processor was getting so hot it went into thermal shutdown. (My processor runs at 100% during Production; nothing else I've run stresses it to that level)

You should check to see how hot your cpu is getting. About 10 seconds after it shut down I rebooted and forced the system to go into the motherboard BIOS setup mode (holding down the Delete key during the beginning of reboot does it for my motherboard). This is where you can make changes to a variety of motherboard settings. When I selected "PC Health" I found that the cpu temperature was 90 degrees C! It seems that the recommended upper temp for my processor (AMD Athlon 64x2, 2.7 Mhz) is around 70 degrees C. I opened the case, blew out a little dust in the cpu heatsink, removed the heatsink and fan, cleaned off the old thermal heat sink compound and applied some new compound and reinstalled the heatsink/fan on the cpu. Problem solved!

Now, with one cover left off the case, the cpu temperature at the end of successful Production of a 9 minute video is 42 degrees C. With all covers installed on the computer case, the cpu at the end of Production only reaches 69 degrees C. If you clean out dust and improve the flow of air to your computer case and still have the problem, you may need to install new thermal compound as I did. Or you may have a worn out cpu heatsink fan, or you may need to add another fan to your case.

FYI - a PC should NOT get over heated just because it's rendering HD video. If it is then you may have other issues with the PC. PD11 does not in general over tax PC cycles in standard editing mode.

Heat was an issue in the old days. Not today.
Win 10, i7

Sounds like a combination of CPU, video card, memory, and a shaky power supply. When I got my AMD 5770 I replaced my 450 watt power supply with an 800 watt power supply and now nothing gets hot. The air coming out the cpu fan, power supply fan, and video card fan outlet is just slightly warm. When I first put that AMD video card it I knew I had problems with the power supply. It was like a furnace behind the computer. But it still worked. But the 800 watt supply does not even know it's being used... not one time since have I heard the fans kick up on rpm.

You need to do some basic trouble shooting. Plus you PC may not be able to handle PD11. It's a beast if you try to do HD.

Since we do not know anything about your machine we can only give bad guesses... __________________________________________
Windows 8 Pro 64 bit

CyberLink PowerDirector 10 Tutorials
PDtoots PowerDirector Tutorials

**NOTICE**
When you are asked to provide a DXDIAG you go the following link and do part "B". Your posted specs are NOT what we are looking for as they tell us nothing. The specs on the box of your computer mean nothing. The DXDIAG shows us how your computer is configured as it runs.

DXDIAG Link

Jasper1 and James,

I can't say that your problem is the same as my problem, but I can tell you I've successfully produced a half dozen videos since solving the heatsink-to-processor thermal resistance problem.

I installed my processor and heatsink on a new motherboard a couple of years ago. The other programs I use every day don't run the processor as hard as CyberLink does, thus my daily operations don't cause the processor to consume as much energy and therefore it doesn't produce as much heat. You can view your processor's load via the Windows Task Manager (holding down the ctl, alt and del keys at the same time opens Task Manger). Click on the performance tab and you can see what percentage of your processor is being used as you load programs, web pages, etc. During normal operations, mine bounces around between 10% and 60%. When I start production of a video in CyberLink Director 11, it jumps to 100% for the entire operation. That means maximum heat is being generated.

Heat is the enemy; all semiconductors will fail at a specified maximum temperature. If you do a Google search for "thermal shutdown of a processor", you'll see that others have this problem even when their processor isn't being pushed very hard. I don't blame CyberLink for the problem, it's just that it showed up a problem with my computer that I had all along and didn't know it.

A well designed PC or even a laptop using an i7 processor will not over heat using PD11. Some gaming software is another story. Win 10, i7

Hi,
I am the 10th post here and there has been no reply by the originator, jasper1. Was it a troll post?
Dafydd